This volume is intended as a companion book to ‘Mathematical wrinkles’ for teachers and private learners

" As the drill will not penetrate the granite unless kept to the work hour after hour, so the mind will not penetrate the secrets of mathematics unless held long and vigorously to the work. As the sun's rays burn only when concentrated, so the mind achieves mastery in mathematics, and indeed in every branch of knowledge, only when its possessor hurls all his forces upon it.Mathematics, like all the other sciences, opens its doors to those only who knock long and hard.No more damaging evidence can be adduced to prove the weakness of character than for one to have aversion to mathematics; for whether one wishes or not, it is nevertheless true; that to have aversion for mathematics means to have aversion to accurate, painstaking, and persistent hard study, and to have aversion to hard study is to fail to secure a liberal education, and thus fail to compete in that fierce and vigorous struggle for the highest and the truest and the best in life which only the strong can hope to secure." — B. F. Finkel.